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Post-Practice Transcript: Jim Schwartz, 08-09-10

“We got him and Will Heller off the PUP. Both of those guys have been working really hard and they’ve made progress and haven’t had any setbacks. The next progression was getting them out here and running through a full individual (period) and the next step will be to get them into some seven-on-seven situations and we’ll wean those guys back in.

“We missed his personality on the field. He brings a lot of excitement to our defense. We need to play with his personality on defense. We get him in our walkthroughs and things like that, but we need him with his teammates on the field and communicating and all of those things. It’s good to see 26 back.”

On whether WR Nate Burleson will be taking any reps as a punt returner

“I don’t know – he can do it. One of the reasons you don’t see him out there catching them is because it’s hard to evaluate the other guys when he’s hogging up all of the reps. He can go catch them and we don’t have an issue at all there. A lot of that will depend on game situations, opponent, time of the year – all those different things would go into it. But he’s in the mix. He’s going to return punts at sometime this year. Whether it’s in the opening game, last game of the season, somewhere in between, first quarter, fourth quarter, overtime, it’s going to be sometime and he’ll be ready. He’s really good at doing it. The only way we can get the work to the other guys is for him to be out of that mix at this point. I have complete 100-percent trust in him and he’s a playmaker back there, he’s really strong.”

On his expectations heading into the second week of camp

“The first week of camp isn’t the same as the old first week of camp for rookies. Almost all of the guys were here on May 17. They had a good solid month in our offseason program. They had OTA’s, minicamp –they were all up to speed. There isn’t a decrease in expectation for rookies the way it used to be. They way it used to be, you brought rookies in early. Some teams still do, but you brought them in early to try and get them caught up. Now, they’re here for so long, they get caught up in late May, early June. We expect the same things out of our rookies as our other guys. They have good role models to look to on this team, develop their practice habits and things like that. Starting from the very first day, they shouldn’t be making any mental mistakes and things like that. “

“He’s doing fine. Just like last year, Jason wants to do more and it he feels like he can do more and our trainers are sort of gearing him back a little bit and trying to be cautious for him. He’s doing good.”

On WR Nate Burleson

“Yeah, he’s a tough guy. There are not many receivers that have the fearlessness like Nate Burleson has that will go across the middle. It’s one thing to take hits in the game, but he’ll go through and fight for balls; fight linebackers and DBs for balls in practice and so he can get a first down and stuff like that. It takes a special mentality. He’s just always upbeat, he’s competitive, he’s out at practice every single day, he’s professional and he’s really strong. He’s good at that position for us.”

On short yardage drills

“We hadn’t really planned on going live there but it was starting to get competitive and looking at what we were doing on the script and everything else, it was like, ‘Ok, let’s let them compete a little bit.’ It brought practice up. The four minute period that we did was just more of an administrative thing of what we’re doing in those situations, how we are using the clock, for when we are going out of bounds and stuff like that. So we didn’t need to beat each other on that. But the good thing is we’ve done a little bit of live contact so the first time that we have a short yardage play in our first preseason game won’t be the first time our teams have done it.”